Finding Opportunities with Late Adopters in Boring Industries

This article may seem like a bit of a self-licking ice cream cone considering I work for Howard. And be that as it may, I couldn’t shake the insights on finding opportunities with what most consider “late adopters” or “boring” industries.

Garry is still a believer in plain old software. It’s mostly too boring to even mention, but it’s a large part of GDP. Take logistics. The world still runs on the bill of lading; a piece of paper. Look at any industry where there are file cabinets and fax machines and pieces of paper.

There are many vertical marketplaces run by the last generation of people who aren’t digital natives. They didn’t grow up with iPhones. They’re more comfortable holding a form in triplicate and using a file cabinet.

Now enter a new generation who go to lunch and post a photo of it on Instagram. They go back to their desk and email an excel spreadsheet. They don’t want to be doing that. They want smart software with structured data that makes everything better, faster, cheaper.

We’ll see a ton of businesses in obscure industries who can benefit from bridging the physical and digital economies. A large chunk of GDP will go from paper and pencil and ‘steak dinner’ enterprise sales to digital marketplaces that have perfect pricing data that’s faster, cheaper.

“You can’t just be one of these Stanford/Harvard CS majors going out and creating something like a photo sharing app again.” Gary says. “You’ve got to actually go and find people who may have spent five to ten years in an old industry that nobody knows about.”

Pair this with people who can build software, and you’ll mint a new billion dollar company every single year.

Originally published at https://peteweishaupt.beehiiv.com.